Retail shopping facilities have a retail display area where potential purchasers can view and select the items they wish to purchase. In many cases that retail display area harbors many of each item such that at least a portion of the facility's inventory is stored in that retail display area. Often, however, the retail shopping facility will have too many of at least some items to accommodate storing everything in that retail display area. Accordingly, many retail shopping facilities also have a non-public storage area to store items prior to moving those items to the retail display area.
Some items have a shorter shelf life than others. Perishable food items, for example, should ordinarily be sold or otherwise disposed of in a relatively short period of time. Other items may have a longer but nevertheless limited shelf life. Accordingly, proper management of a non-public storage area includes favoring moving older examples of a particular item to the retail sales area as versus moving newer examples of that item.
Unfortunately, while a simple enough preference to express, executing a useful, efficient, cost-effective process to reliably achieve such a result has proven elusive.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present teachings. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present teachings. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.